


Pressure Like Rain

by fadeverb



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-11
Updated: 2016-01-11
Packaged: 2018-05-13 07:00:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5699275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fadeverb/pseuds/fadeverb
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's dawn, and Rey doesn't know what do with herself. The sun here doesn't scorch. Water falls from the sky, puddles on the ground, drips casually from the edges of rooftops. She's sitting cross-legged on a stone wall right now, watching the horizon turn from gray to gold, and the camouflage canopy overhead drops a fat splat of water across the fabric on her knees every few seconds.</p>
<p>The general is nearby.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pressure Like Rain

It's dawn, and Rey doesn't know what do with herself. The Millennium Falcon has been swarmed by engineers for the last two days, _professional_ ones who learned in real schools, not by pulling things apart and putting them back together again, then seeing if the results still worked. There's a room in this Resistance base that exists for no purpose but to hand food to people who walk in wanting a meal. Finn is still silent on the medical table where they've laid him, and there are professionals for that, too. Everywhere she looks, she sees another person with a job. Work trained for, assigned from above, with schedules and support staff and--well. It's outside her experience.

Dawn, and instead of everyone being busy at the first natural light while it's still cool outside, most of the base is asleep. The sun here doesn't scorch. Water falls from the sky, puddles on the ground, drips casually from the edges of rooftops. She's sitting cross-legged on a stone wall right now, watching the horizon turn from gray to gold, and the camouflage canopy overhead drops a fat splat of water across the fabric on her knees every few seconds.

It's cold, here. As cold as a Jakku night, but the temperature stays that way far longer. Blazing noon will feel like half an hour past dawn. All her time-sense is scrambled. Time and space both. She can't tell which way is north by closing her eyes, and her sense of where things are--the downed star destroyer that way, the settlement that way, how far between on foot or speeder--has abandoned her. This base could be floating isolated in space itself, when she isn't looking out over the walls at that green.

Green, and the glowing dawn, and a dot of blue on the horizon, descending. 

By the time Rey has scrambled down from the wall to find the nearest sentry, the man has company she wasn't expecting. The general herself: dressed, clear-eyed, watching that same horizon. Sometimes Rey wonders if General Organa ever sleeps; she looks tired, now and again, but always ready for what's coming.

Maybe the general just hasn't been sleeping well these last few days. Who could blame her?

"It's not an attack," the sentry says to Rey. His smile splits his entire face; grandfatherly, she'd call the expression, if she can apply the term to a species that switches sexes as it ages. Paternal, anyway. He's one of the many people with the Resistance who seems to be treating her like a long-lost niece, or the child of a friend, and she'd find it patronizing if it didn't seem so...sweet. Like they've been waiting for her to show up and fill that role, all this time. "Representatives from other bases, here to coordinate plans."

General Organa's mouth twists. Rey wants to know what's behind that expression, and doesn't want to ask, not if it's something like _Imagine if they had already been here_ or _What's the point now_ or--any of the things she can't actually imagine the general saying out loud.

The sentry looks to the general, too. The weight of expectations must be like the rain: rolling down on a person constantly, even after the storm has passed.

"As we should," says General Organa. She walks away--not briskly, not the way the pilots go jogging across the field towards their fighters. With the kind of determined stride that says she knows where she's going. And with a look back towards Rey that says _If you'd like to come along_ , as clear as the words would've been.

Well. Rey would like to. It's not as if the sentries need her to watch daylight creep in, or that ship that's inbound now. Another old general to meet, and soon the base will be awash with them. The Resistance gives out a lot of titles, in addition to the ones people seem to have brought in from other places. (General Organa is sometimes "general" and sometimes "princess" and sometimes "commander", all of which seem to come down to being the person who points everyone else in the right direction.) It's easy to catch up with the general, and then tag along at her side.

They're walking together, like two people who want to be together. It makes her ache, suddenly and unexpectedly, for Finn. If this were someone else, if this weren't the _general_ , Rey might take her hand. But that's probably best saved for running from danger. Meetings and departures, that sort of thing.

General Organa shades her eyes against the pale morning sun as they reach the field where the fighters wait. The Millennium Falcon is out of sight from here, parked nearer the main hangar for repairs. (Not many fighters are in for repairs right now. The ones that took significant damage just didn't come back.) One of the signalers raises a bright baton, and holds the other out to the side.

There's a code here that Rey wants to learn, as much as she wants to learn the manuals for repair, all the details of these ships that aren't clever tricks and best effort kludges, done with what's on hand and the time available, but the way to set them _right_. No one on Jakku set down a ship based on signals, any more than they handed out rations for free. There's an _order_ to things in this place.

And putting it into those words, just inside her head, makes Rey want to crouch down and gasp over her knees for a moment. She does not. She stands side by side with the general, wanting it to be hand to hand, and watches the passenger ship settle down. (A sweet little transport, flashier than she would've expected for the Resistance.) Is that what pulls people into the orbit of the New Order? The certainty. The rules. It's right there in their name, isn't it? Listen to us, do what we say, and it will all make sense. Security instead of choice.

The Resistance is made of people who didn't just hesitate at the offer, but chose _no_ as strongly as she did. So it's order, here, but also that sense of motion, like the power that came through her when she rejected the offer. It's not like being personally powerful, not exactly. It's like having your best friend standing behind you with blaster at the ready to cover you. It's like sitting at the controls of a fast ship, trusting it to give you as much as it can when you ask it for that help.

The transport ship flips open its doors, so smooth and fast it must have never visited a planet with sandstorms. Now those are well-maintained hinges, and the human who strides down the ramp looks just as sharp, a cape snapping behind him and his boots polished to a high shine.

"General," he says, with a smile as if it's an inside joke just to make that greeting. But the smile's gone as fast as it arrived. "I came as soon as I heard." He takes steps up to General Organa and takes her hands in his own. "If I'd known he was back--"

"Chasing him never worked for you before." She wraps her own hands around his wrists, a long quiet moment of something Rey can't quite put a name to.

Maybe that's what friendship looks like, when it's seen from the outside.

Then General Organa lets go, with a half step back, and says, "Rey, this is General Calrissian."

It's a name from legend. Those legends keep springing to life around her these days, with gray in their hair. "The smuggler? You worked for Han Solo!"

"With," he says, and laughs. " _With_ , and you know that ship was mine before it was his." He holds a hand out to her, and when she gives him her own, he bows over it. "A pleasure to meet you, Rey. How did you get caught up in our mess?"

"She's the one who'll find Luke," says General Organa.

Lando Calrissian, of legend and fame, straightens up and looks Rey right in the eyes. "Then she must be the best for the job," he says. "I'll ask more later, but, Leia, what about--"

"He's in the Falcon, of course," says General Organa. "Go on."

Rey watches the man who never denied the smuggling part stride away, cape swirling behind him. "All the stories are true," she says, "aren't they?"

"If they paint him as a scoundrel, who does the right thing in the end," says the general, "then, yes. True enough."

The stories Rey is thinking of had less of _right thing_ and more of _exciting_ or _daring_ or any number of adjectives that set her down in a flight simulator again, or dreaming with a helmet set over her head. But she's discovering that there's a great deal more to reaching her dreams than the exciting parts.

And then the general puts an arm around Rey's shoulders, and says, "Let's find breakfast before the line gets long." That's enough to spin any line of thought into space.

#

"What if he doesn't want to be found?" Rey asks the general, over breakfast. The room is quiet; it's too early for the wave of people on day shift to show up before their work starts. She can sit cross-legged on a bench at a table, watching the woman across from her, and speak quietly, be heard perfectly well. It's a setup that inspires some sharing of confidences. Rey wants to share every secret she's never told anyone, but she's trying to be--what can she even call it? Professional?

Like the sort of person who belongs here, surrounded by so many people in uniform who know exactly what to do, and when.

"My brother always had a great deal of faith in people," says General Organa, as if this answers the question. "That they could change, or be more."

"General--"

"Call me Leia," says the general. "Please. Not Princess or General or Senator... Been a long time since the last one."

"Leia," Rey says, and the word is strange in her mouth. "You're his sister. I've never met him." Except maybe in visions. Those don't count. Those can't count, can they?

"Did you know," says the general--says Leia, this change matters, and Rey means to remember it--"that Han met him before I ever did? We were separated as infants, to protect both of us. The first time I ever saw him, there was this stormtrooper in armor that didn't fit, just _blundering_ right into the cell where they'd put me."

"Just like Finn and Poe."

"A rescue is a rescue," Leia says, "whoever pulls it off. He rescued me, I rescued him, both of us rescued Han. If I thought he was in danger, if I felt that, I would be on a ship towards him right now."

Rey turns a fork over on her plate, rolling a strip of meat across it. She's full, and isn't that a wonder? So full she can't eat more. Any time she shows up here. Maybe that's the source of the nervous energy running through her, the one that has her chanting _Finish faster_ in her head as the mechanics work on the Falcon, _Wake up already_ at Finn when she visits him, _Let's go now_ at Chewbacca when she sees him. "The New Order was looking for him."

"And they didn't put the map together. We did. He's not in danger, Rey. He's not the one who needs a rescue." Leia picks up a cup and watches her directly through the steam. "We do. You're the one who can save us this time."

"How can you be sure?"

"Sometimes," Leia says, "you just know."

"Do you know from the Force, or from being a general?"

Leia smiles at her. And doesn't give her an answer for that one.

#

Noon is no time for standing out in the middle of the sun. Rey's doing it anyway. Up at the wall again, all the raindrops done with falling on her, and she stands out in the sunlight watching the horizon. Another ship's come in since morning: no one she's heard of, but a big name in the Resistance. The blue sky curves down to the green line in the distance, clear of the morning's clouds. As clear as the sky is when it touches the sand at noon, back home.

She has to get back home.

But some things are more important than going home.

The footsteps behind her are familiar now, as familiar as the voice that says, "Watching for anything special?"

"No," Rey says. "I only wanted to make sure I remembered it. For later." She takes a breath. "I'm ready to go. Any time the ship's ready and the map is set. As far as it takes me."

Leia stops beside her, and leans in. Shoulder to shoulder, watching the sky. "I know."

**Author's Note:**

> For the sake of my own sanity, the only canon I am attempting to adhere to in this story is what's in the movies themselves. Any corrections to errors I've made due to shaky memory there are quite welcome.


End file.
